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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoKim Hong-Ji | Associated PressSouth Korean President Park Geun-hye, center, salutes her country’s flag in Seoul during a ceremony to recall the 1919 uprising against Japanese colonial rule.

By Choe Sang-HunThe New York Times • Sunday March 2, 2014 12:08 PM

SEOUL, South Korea — Unleashing fresh criticism of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, President
Park Geun-hye of South Korea yesterday urged him to be honest and courageous enough to face his
country’s history of aggression in the early 20th century, especially its enslavement of Asian
women in Imperial Army brothels.

“True courage lies not in denying the past but in looking squarely at the history as it was and
teaching growing generations the correct history,” Park said, referring to Japan’s often-brutal
colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945. “The more one denies the history of the past, the more
wretched and more isolated one gets.”

Just a day earlier, Abe’s government said it would re-examine a landmark 1993 apology it made to
the sex slaves, commonly known by the euphemism “comfort women.”

Park made her comments during a nationally televised speech on the anniversary of a 1919
uprising by Koreans against their colonial masters. South Korean leaders traditionally commemorate
the anniversary, an important national holiday here, with overtures or warnings against Japan and
North Korea.

Relations between South Korea and Japan have long been prickly because of the colonial past. But
they have been aggravated further under Park and Abe.

Since she took office in February last year, Park has refused to hold a summit meeting with Abe
and has fired off a steady stream of criticism of the Japanese leader, whom South Korea considers a
nationalist demagogue trying to glorify his country’s World War II history and deny responsibility
for some of its most horrific elements.

Abe recently raised tensions further by visiting a shrine that honored convicted war
criminals.